By George & Josh Bate
Starting today, fans and gamers all around the world will be able to make their very own Star Wars video games.
Lucasfilm and Epic Games have teamed up to bring Star Wars assets to its Fortnite Unreal Editor (UEFN). This is much bigger than a Star Wars-specific season or some cool characters to play as – this update allows gamers to develop any Star Wars gaming experience they can think of.
A trailer for the new Star Wars tools (which you can see below) shows an example of some of the games you can make and play, including a Mario Party-style multiplayer game, a Battlefield-esque shooter on Hoth, a sidescroller with Luke Skywalker, a Pokemon-type game with droids, a large-scale dogfighting game, and more.
The update will allow players to use tons of new Force abilities, enhanced Mandalorian jetpacks, and even Star Wars-themed UI and fonts.
One of the cool and as of yet untapped areas of potential for this update is a mechanic that allows players to talk with NPCs, akin to role-playing games like Skyrim. This means that fans can theoretically build a game like Mass Effect with this new update.
Soon, Epic will enable support for first-person shooting, allowing creators to craft Call of Duty-esque games in a galaxy far, far away.
Epic announced that the update comes with three “exemplar” islands that they designed with Lucasfilm. These include Hoth, Tatooine, and Nevarro. Classic scene sets like the Mos Eisley Cantina and the Death Star are also available.
Fans can be begin creating their own Star Wars games/islands today, but they won’t be able to publish anything for public access until May 1 (just in time for Star Wars Day on May the 4th).